The mob in Didsbury in 1793 …………… opposing progress and the ideas of the day

January 1793 was an uncertain time across the country.  

Didsbury in 1853

The weather was unseemingly cold, the harvest had been poor, and in France the survival of the monarchy was in doubt.

All of which might explain why a crowd gathered to watch as an effigy of that well-known radical, Thomas Paine was burned on the village green in front of the two village pubs.*

And after the event some of the crowd will have settled down in the Old Cock, and the Ring o’Bells which would be rebuilt as the Church Inn and is now the Didsbury Hotel.

Just how many of those swapping stories in the two pubs, were in favour of Tom Paine, and how many had taken against the man who supported both the American and the French Revolutions, we will never know, but our two publicans may well have been pleased at the turn of events which brought in the customers.

The crowd who assembled to see the event may have been driven by a fear of Paine’s ideas or out of sheer curiosity, but they weren’t alone, because in all that orgy of burning, Bromsgrove in Worcestershire was “the only town in England in which an effigy of Tom Paine was not burned”, leaving the Manchester Guardian to add that there in Bromsgrove, “Democracy predominates.”**

Thomas Paine, 1792

And that leads me to the only description of a burning that we have for Manchester, which was the one carried out on December 17th 1792,
"The inhabitants at top Deansgate, hanged the effigy of Tom Paine, dressed in a Maroon coloured Coat, Striped Waistcoat, and greasy pair of Breeches, a Barber’s Block with a Wig on supplied the Place of a Head, from his Coat Pockets hung shreds of Paper and on the shoulder a Quantity of Thread, emblematical of his devant Trade, with ‘The Rights of Man’ stitched on his Breast; thus he hung an Hour, amidst the Acclamations of Hunderds of Spectators; he was afterwards dragged through the Streets, and then committed to the flames the Populace singing ‘God Save the King’"***

This event came during a surge of ‘loyalism’ in Manchester where a carefully crafted campaign had been waged against those who had embraced the French Revoultion and argued for a Radical ideas.

In the same month, the home of Thomas Walker on South Parade was attacked by an organizaned mob of Church and King supporters, and Walker was forced to drive them off by discharging a pistol.

Writing later of the event he commented,

“Emboldened by drink and fired on by agitators, groups hostile to the radicals began to gather around the city.  Walker was in no doubt that this was pre-planned.  

Thomas Walker, 1794

Parties were collected in different public houses, and from thence paraded in the streets with a fiddler before them, and carrying board on which was painted with CHURCH and KING in large letters’ 

On four separate occasions a mob gathered outside South Parade, broke the windows and attempted to force their way in.  Supported by friends Thomas Walker was forced to fire into the air to disperse the crowds. 

The magistrates did nothing to prevent the events and while a “regiment of dragoons was in town, booted and under arms” and ready to disperse the rioters no order was given. 

As if to add insult to injury the main concern of the magistrates when they finally met Walker was that he should not fire at the crowd again if the mob returned!  These attacks had been matched by similar ones on the home of Priestly in Birmingham and in Nottingham.” ****


Location; Didsbury and Manchester

Pictures; Thomas Paine, 1792, Thomas Walker. 1794, Didsbury showing the Church Inn and Old Cock, 1853, from the OS for Lancashire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/


*Axon, William, The Annals of Manchester, 1885, page 120

** Bromsgrove, Manchester Guardian, January 20th, 1793

***Manchester Mercury, January 1, 1793, quoted by O’Gorman Frank, Manchester Loyalism in the 1790s from Return to Peterloo Manchester Region History Review, Volume 23 2012

**** Walker, Thomas, A Review of some of the events of the last five years, London 1794 page 23

The Spanish Civil War, by Chris Hall ..... and the Chorlton Two

Today I got a message from Chris Hall who has written extensively about the Spanish Civil War.

"Hello Andrew, my new book British Volunteers and the Spanish Civil War: ‘The Passionate Cause’, 1936-39 is available now at a reduced price. For more details about the book see below:

Ninety years ago, a Civil War broke out in a then little-known country. For thousands of British, Irish and Commonwealth people, the Spanish Civil War was their main focus for three years.

Over 2,500 “British” (including Irish and Commonwealth) men and women fought in the International Brigades or served in the medical services of the Spanish Republic. Over 500 volunteers were to die in Spain.

Other “British” volunteers served as mercenary pilots and in the revolutionary militias (including George Orwell); some even served on the side of the rebel forces.

At home, thousands participated in ‘Spanish Aid’ activities, raising funds for food ships and medical supplies for Republican Spain. During the Civil War, 4000 Basque refugee children were supported by public donations. Picasso’s Guernica painting toured England to raise funds.

This is the story of ordinary men and women, told in their own words and reflecting the whole gamut of emotions from ecstasy to despair.

Many volunteers would go on to fight in the Second World War, and some became leading figures in post-War Britain. But for many volunteers, the Spanish Civil War was the “Passionate Cause” and the outstanding episode of their lives. This is their story.

The book can be purchased from the publishers or via Amazon”.

To which I can add, it will be published on January 30th, 2026, and costs £29.99, but there is a pre order introductory offer which allows you to buy the book for £23.99 by following the link.*

This is his second book, the first was on The Nurse Who became a Spy Madge Addy's war Against Fascism, and came out in 2022.  Madge Addy lived in Chorlton.  She was a shadowy figure, who worked as a nurse on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War and went on to work for the SOE during the last World War.

All of which leaves me to write that along with Madge Addy, Chris Hall’s new book includes the story of Bernard McKenna who lived at Egerton Road North for many years and was also associated with the Civil War.

*Pre order https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/British-Volunteers-and-the-Spanish-Civil-War-The-Passionate-Cause-1936-39-Hardback/p/57241

**Madge Addy, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Madge%20Addy

Photographs from the Royal Herbert during the Great War ............ a unique album of pictures

The Royal Herbert, date unknown

Now the story of the Royal Herbert has just got a lot more exciting and that has a lot to do with a fascinating photograph album from the Great War.

It belongs to my old friend David Harrop who has a unique collection of memorabilia covering both world wars as well as the history of the Post Office.

And today I am looking through it with the hope that some at least of the men and the nurses in the pictures can be traced and their stories uncovered.

Christmas Day, 1915

In time I might even be able to discover the nurse responsible for the album.

A few of the nurses are named and tantalizingly two pictures are captioned “myself” so the search is on which may be made easier as the Red Cross continues to add to its online data base of those who served during the Great War.

And then there are the large number of photographs of soldiers in their “hospital blues” recovering on the wards, a few party scenes and handful from soldiers who had recovered and left the hospital.

Summer, 1916

Together they help reveal a little bit of life in the Royal Herbert during 1915 and 1916.

Given the quality of the cameras and the age of the pictures some images have not fared so well but even the poorest have a story to tell.

One of my favourites is of Sister Thomson and a group of men on a ward on Christmas Day in 1915 along with a much faded image of the garden in the summer of 1916.

Now these albums were quite common but I suspect not that many have survived.

Album cover

David has two more which contain comments, poems and drawings of men recovering from wounds and illnesses.

One remains a mystery but the other comes from a Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham and it has been possible to track  some of the men who made a contribution.

Their stories are as varied as I am sure will be the ones from the Herbert and include a young Canadian who survived the war and went home to live a successful and productive life and another who is buried in the military hospital outside Cairo.

And like all good stories led my friend Susan who lives in Canada to tell the story of that young Canadian and in so doing brought his drawing and his words  off the pages of the Cheltenham book and back from the past.

Now that I have to say was both exciting and moving.

The Royal Herbert album is different in that it only has photographs but in looking through it I have made a link with a hospital I knew well and which at one point in the 1970s treated our mother.

All of which makes it that bit special.

David's permanent exhibition can be seen in the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery, Manchester and currently features a collection of material commemorating the Manchester Blitz.

Pictures; from the Royal Hebert collection, 1915-16 courtesy of David Harrop

*Blighty, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Blighty

Sonnets ..... wot Shakespeare wrote .... today on the wireless

Now, this is one I enjoyed.

Shake-Speare's Sonnets, 1609

It is another in the In Our Time series, has a bonus few minutes, from Historian and broadcaster Simon Schama who has selected the episode on Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

"In 1609 Thomas Thorpe published a collection of poems entitled Shakespeare’s Sonnets, “never before imprinted”.

Yet, while some of Shakespeare's other poems and many of his plays were often reprinted in his lifetime, the Sonnets were not a publishing success. 

They had to make their own way, outside the main canon of Shakespeare’s work: wonderful, troubling, patchy, inspiring and baffling, and they have appealed in different ways to different times. 

Most are addressed to a man, something often overlooked and occasionally concealed; one early and notorious edition even changed some of the pronouns.

With: Hannah Crawforth, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at King’s College London, Don Paterson, Poet and Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews and Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson"

Locatiob; BBC Radio 4

Picture; Shake-Speare's Sonnets, quarto published by Thomas Thorpe, London, 1609

*Shakespeare’s Sonnets, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_fourfm

Lawrence Beedle ... my friend

 I have been thinking of my friend Lawrence who died recently, and as you do I have been reflecting on over 40 years of friendship.

Lawrence

We shared an interest in history and particularly the Labour Party and the Co-op movement which for Lawrence translated into a deep knowledge which was a product of years of research.

Co-op Spring fashions, 1939

I always remember the time he compiled a complete collection of local election results for Chorlton stretching back to 1904 which also included all the MPs elected for our bit of south Manchester charting the complicated journey of boundary changes. 

Nor was it just the obscure.  

His knowledge and understanding of Co-op history was so detailed he could talk with authority on the founding of Co-operation in Manchester, the advance of the Manchester and Salford Equitable Co-op Society not to be confused with Marks and Spencer’s which carried the same initials on their shop fronts.  

And Lawrence could offer up the dates for the opening of the stores and exactly which Co-op store was best for buying furniture. 

Lawrence recounting when the Co-op went Self service, undated

Equally Lawrence was his blog on just one Co-op store … the one on Hardy Lane.   *

The blog ranged over all sorts of history from food to retail stamps, old 78 gramophone records and the story of Sanatogen that “Tonic and Restorative Wine”.

As he once said “before Lucozade there was Sanatogen”.

Now that blog is still live and is well worth a visit.

And all of this was done with joy as if the discovery and retelling was the fun.

And the fun also came in testing the past like the time he announced he was going to recreate some now forgotten war time dishes using the same rationed ingredients.

Orange curd, 1940

He started with the National Loaf from 1941 and accompanied it with Woolton Pie which consisted of diced cooked potatoes, cauliflower, carrots and turnips to which were added rolled oats chopped spring onions and vegetable stock which formed the gravy.  

Both the loaf and the pie were met with derision and even hostility during the war and so Lawrence just wanted to taste them himself and see what the fuss was all about.

I brought to the table a bowl of orange curd made from a 1940 recipe.  

We sat back and reflected that as vegetarians all three dishes were pretty dammed good, and the project was the perfect example of reenacting history.

And along the way we had touched a bit of the past even if it was a tad silly.

That silliness could also be the academic challenge, like the day he found a card of fuse wire, and challenged me to turn it into a history story, commenting,  “We’ve all got things at the back of a drawer. This must be 40 or 50 years old. Fuse wire in three different amperages. When did you last use fuse wire?

Winfield was the brand name for own label goods from Woolworths”. 

The Lawrence fuse wire challege

Of course there was so much more to him, from his days with Rabid Records, his fascination with the possibilities of the early internet, his contribution to the Unicorn Food Co-op, along with his impish sense of humour, his rabbit hole interests and much more.

So there you have it, my friend Lawrence.

Pictures; Lawrence, courtesy of Kathy his wife, and other images drawn from his blog, Hardy Lane Scrapbook

*Hardy Lane Scrapbook, https://hardylane.blogspot.com/

Seven bars .... one road .... and a Cafe culture

This is Beech Road in 1935, and I doubt that anyone at the time would have thought that ninety years later it would be the centre of Chorlton’s bar and restaurant revolution.

Beech Road, 1935

When I arrived in 1976 it was still a mix of shops where you could buy fresh food from several butchers, a green grocer and at least two grocery stores, as well as a bag of nails a gallon of paraffin,  balls of wool and get your hair cut.

But the growing dominance of supermarkets and changed patterns of shopping dealt a death blow to these traditional shops which had cornered the market for almost a century.

In their place came Café on the Green on the corner of Acres and Beech, Bob Amato’s Italian Deli and Primavera, quickly followed by the Lead Station.

Cafe on the Green, 1995

And it is of Café on the Green and its successors I am reflecting on.

The building has had a varied history, starting off as a hardware shop, becoming a hair dressers and then  briefly selling pianos, before settling down for its long association with food.

And without ever wanting to sound like Methuselah I can claim to have eaten in the place when it first opened as Cafe on the Green, and later when it was known variously as Blue Note, the Nose and Marmalade, the Parlour and then Suburban Green.

And now it has The Jane Eyre run by the two brothers who made their name with the Northern Quarter restaurant, Jane Eyre, which was “Built and named in memory of our mum, [and is] a warm and welcoming neighbourhood bar. Serving classic cocktails with a twist, an eclectic range of keg and bottled beers and simple, great tasting food using the highest quality ingredients”.*

The Jane Eyre, 2025

I could of course just make the observation that the entire stretch of land from Acres Road up to Chequers was Blomely's Fish pond, which vanished sometime in the 1870s, and that according to our local historian, Mr. Ellwood a small water course ran the length of Acres Road which was paved over.

But that is for another time.

Marmalade, 2007

The Nose, undated

Surburban Green with a look back at the Parlour, 2020

The closed and sad looking Parlour, 2020

For now, I present a selection of pictures from them olden days.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Beech Road in 1935 courtesy Marjorie Holmes of the transformation from the Nose, Marmalade, the Parlour and Jayne Eyre, 1990s-2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Jane Eyre, https://www.thejaneeyre.co.uk/

“Influenza is still spreading in Manchester and the death rate is high”*......... stories behind the book nu 21

An occasional series on the stories behind the  book on Manchester and the Great War**

All deaths in Manchester, November 1918

Now however you play with the figures the flu epidemic of 1918 was an awful event.

It had begun in the summer, returned later in the autumn, and impacted on industry and commerce, briefly disrupting the tram service and leading to a closure of all Manchester schools on November 30.***

And despite the medical authorities concluding that the outbreak was “reaching the culminating point” and anticipating a decline from the start of December, they called for the closure of all Sunday schools and recommended that children under fourteen should be barred from cinemas and theatres.

Manchester flu deaths as a % of all deaths in November 1918

A wise precaution given that the death toll had risen through November from 81 at the end of the first week up to 297 by November 23, which is shocking enough but is more so when expressed as a % of total deaths.  At the beginning of the month deaths from flu had amounted to 32% of all recorded deaths but by the fourth week that figure had climbed to 53%.

According to one newspaper the mortuaries were full, undertakers couldn’t keep pace with the orders and at the cemeteries the labour available for grave digging had proved quite inadequate.

This had led to efforts to release skilled coffin makers from the army and a call for “greater simplicity in funeral arrangements and a more extensive use of the crematorium.”

And as ever there were those who were swift to make money from the crisis and those who sought easy explanations for its appearance.

Fight the Flu, 1918

So the firm Genatosan Ltd offered up their “Germ Killing Throat Tablet” which would ensure “you will be safe from Spanish Influenza and other epidemics".

It was endorsed by Lady Manns, Lady Jane Joicey-Cecil and Mr Matheson Lang who was ordered by his doctors to take the tablet Formamint which “gave me great relief.”****

It was a set of recommendations bettered only by Lady Firbank who added that “Formamint tablets have completely cured my throat which owing to Influenza has been left weak and painful.”

But perhaps we shouldn’t be over harsh on the makers of Formamint for offering their tablet as a remedy given that at least some thought that there might a link between the outbreak and arrival of American troops who landed shortly before the epidemic began.

Or for that matter the musings of a former US President that bleach might be an effective defence against Covid.

Location, Manchester

Picture; Fight the Flu with Formamint, advert, 1918

*Manchester Influenza A High death Rate, Manchester Guardian, November 9, 1918

**A new book on Manchester and the Great War, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

***Influenza, Epidemic at its height in Manchester, Manchester Guardian, November 30, 1918

****Fight the Flu, advert, Manchester Guardian, August 15, 1918